Cries In Vain
by insanechayne
Summary: Headcanon: Before Daryl was born, Merle had another brother. One night, in a drunken rage, their father kills the other brother. Requested by an anon on tumblr. Pre-Walking Dead. Pre-Daryl's brith. Child Merle. OC named Harley as the other brother.


**Cries In Vain**

Many years before Daryl was born, when Merle was only seven years old, he watched his first brother die at the hands of his father.

Harley was ten years old, only three years older than little Merle, and Merle looked up to him as if he were a god. Harley adored the motorcycles he was named after, and dreamed of owning one someday, and he had already had his first kiss behind the run-down brick building their small town called a school. Harley had dirty blond hair that leaned more toward light brown as he grew up, and green eyes that matched their mother's. Sometimes during the summer, when the night was cool, Harley would help Merle climb up to the roof with him, and the two of them would talk about childish things as they stared at the inky indigo sky filled with stars, making wishes on every last one. On those nights their conversations always turned to the subject of the future, and both agreed that they wanted to eventually move out from under their father's thumb and go someplace where his drunken rage couldn't touch them again.

The incident took place during the boy's winter break from school, only a few days before Christmas. The two were watching It's A Wonderful Life on their rusty old television set, and enjoying the general warm feeling the holiday season brought them. A few presents, wrapped in old newspaper, sat in the corner, underneath a side table with a lamp on it, and the brothers pretended that the lamp was their Christmas tree, since they couldn't afford a real one. Their mother was in her and their father's bedroom, supposedly wrapping more gifts, and their father wasn't home yet, which was a blessing.

Around nine o' clock their father stumbled through the front door, a nearly empty bottle of cheap Scotch still glued to his palm. His eyes were glazed over with alcohol, but a certain kind of fury boiled in his irises. This anger was different that all the other times he had come home in a stupor; it was frightening because it was so unfamiliar.

"Harley," Their father spoke with a clarity that shouldn't have been present in him, and Harley rose to his feet as soon as his father called him.

"Yes, sir?" Harley clasped his hands behind his back, trying his hardest to act like a good child and be spared his father's wrath. Beside him, Merle silently switched off the television and crouched closer to the ratty couch, hoping that he might be overlooked.

"That yer bike out there'n my front lawn?" Father leveled his son with a glare akin to that of a demon's.

Harley looked at his socked feet as he mumbled "yes." He had been out riding earlier, and had forgotten to lock his bike up in the garage.

"How many times've I told ya to put that fuckin' thing in the garage where it b'longs?" Father took a step towards Harley, who stood his ground; things were always better if he didn't show too much of his fear.

Harley didn't answer, because he understood that the question was rhetorical, but still his father advanced on him. Then, in one swift motion, the hand that held the bottle came up and struck at Harley's face. The bottle hit the side of the child's head, shattering into a hundred tiny glass shards, and the remains of the Scotch splashed over them. Harley gasped in shock more than pain, and toppled to the floor. His hand flew up to the side of his face and came away slick with blood and alcohol.

"Yer gonna learn to do as I fuckin' tell ya, boy." Father was even more angry now that his alcohol had been lost, and he grabbed Harley by the back of his shirt.

Harley struggled in his father's grip, mumbling out apologies left and right, but it was no use. His father balled his free hand into a fist and brought it down repeatedly against Harley's back. Hot tears sprang from the boy's eyes and rolled down his cheeks in thick streams, and a mangled scream tore itself from the child's throat at every hit his small body suffered. One punch turned to three, to ten, to fifteen, and Harley's back throbbed. Some part of his spine had snapped after the sixth shot, and Harley could no longer move his left leg; it dangled down from his body, now dead weight.

"Learned yer fuckin' lesson yet, sonny?" His father roared in his ear, bringing his fist down one final time on Harley's snapped vertebrae. The pain was so intense, so all encompassing, that the small boy couldn't even scream, because it closed off his airways. As a grand finale, father slammed Harley up against the wall, making sure his head hit the plaster first.

Perhaps it was because Harley happened to turn his head at exactly the wrong moment, or perhaps it was because his spirit could no longer be contained in such a broken body, but that final blow to the head was the one that killed him. Harley's head connected with the wall at the wrong angle, his temple hitting the hard surface first, and then he was gone.

Father released the boy from his grip, letting him drop to the floor. A blood smear stained the wall as the child's body thumped to the ground, and his father gave him one more kick as a punishment for the spot he had left behind.

"Get the fuck up an' make me a sandwich, will ya?" Father turned to sit at the couch, but looked back when he didn't hear his son getting up to do as he was told. "Didn't ya fuckin' hear me, ya little shit? Get yer ass up right this second 'r I'll beat ya again." He kicked Harley's side again, to make his point, but there was still no movement from the child.

Father grumbled under his breath as he rolled his child over onto his back, figuring the kid was probably unconscious, or some other pansy shit like that, since he couldn't handle a beating. But when he looked down at Harley again the boy's abdomen did not rise and fall with breath, and he found no pulse when he pressed his fingers to the child's throat.

"Merle," Father spoke without looking over at his other son. "Go git me a shovel from the garage an' meet me out back."

Merle hustled from the room, biting back the tears welling up inside of him. He already knew his brother was dead. Harley had turned his head to look at Merle, to warn him, and maybe even tell him to get out of there, but then his head had smashed against that wall, and Merle had seen the spark of life leave those green globes.

Merle grabbed the shovel and ran around to the backyard, where his father had already dumped Harley's body on the grass, near the tangle of bushes covering the bottom half of their lawn.

Father didn't say a word, merely grabbed the shovel and began digging. Merle didn't speak either, nor did he leave; he felt that if he tried to leave he would end up in that hole with his brother.

When Merle's father told his mother she screamed and burst into hysterical tears, until his father slapped her across the face. She shut up then, and none of them ever spoke of Harley again.

Roughly a year later, Merle's mother announced she was pregnant with another baby boy, and that they were going to call him Daryl. Merle simple nodded, then went around the house, taking every picture and artifact from Harley's life and hiding them somewhere safe. Daryl would never know of this brother he had never met, would never learn how just how deep their father's brutality went inside of him. Merle vowed that he would do his best to protect his baby brother, and teach him how to fight, and survive their father. He would do everything he could to keep his brother safe, at least until Daryl could stand on his own two feet.


End file.
